Long time readers will know that I often browse the latest issue of New Scientist (and Scientific American) on the basis that you can often extract Traveller ideas relatively easily.

Sitting in the Library coffee shop a couple of weeks back I spotted the above title of an article.

Without changing a word, but changing one bit of capitalization it sparked a raft of ideas:

- the Ancients, as known to the official Traveller universe weren't the only aliens around at the time

- at least one, lets call them the Archaics (I think Primordials has been used elsewhere in Traveller), was the equal of the Ancients

- some Ancient sites are actually Archaic

- some of the hindrances to Imperial scientists in understanding Ancient devices has been that they're dealing with different technologies/cultures

- a scientist who has long studied the Ancients has come up with the above and has been trying to get his hypothesis accepted in mainstream circles

 

- he now has (or as a result of help from the PCs) got film/holograph footage of what looks like a computer terminal type screen showing non-Droyne/Chirper like aliens of very different look and feel to anything known

- naturally, he has a competitor in another scientist who wants to be first with this major discovery but fears the PC's scientist can demonstrate priority of discovery.  The competitor is after the footage or possibly will go further in stopping the first scientist

- further investigation will reveal that the Archaics seeded (DNA structures?  Learning paths?) for many sentient races in Known Space and beyond, throwing the whole major/minor race classification into (further) disarray

etc.

tc

PS Funnily enough as I took a tea break in the middle of this, there was a copy of Times Higher Education lying around in the staff room.  In it was an book review (entitled How Hearts Were Won With Spades) with the subtitle: mass media brought excavators of ancient sites fame and future (the book was Archaeologists in Print: Publishing for the People by Amara Thornton) which of course conjures up Traveller archaeologists gaining fame/notoriety for their finds, or perhaps even the journalists who report on them.  There must be some NPCs or Patrons in there...